Prolegomena to reflective film study: a Bourdieusian analysis of the economy of cinematic exchange

What is unique to the experience of cinema that has ensured its ongoing popularity across generations of filmgoers? As both a theoretical construct and a real world practice, cinematic experience is necessarily implicated in systems of social and cultural stratification, and thus subject to the drive for symbolic distinction amongst classes. As such, practical logics grounded in specific cultural arbitraries hinder illumination of the complexities of film going, perpetuating epistemological errors based in social ignorance and therefore denying a new understanding of cinematic experience in its embodied state. By uncovering the key theoretical and methodological fallacies informing scholastic knowledge production within the discipline of film studies, the sociological program of Pierre Bourdieu allows for the systematic mapping of cinematic experience as an economy of exchange - an economy engaging specialised categories of patron recognition and appreciation in order to offer an experience of recognised social value. Whilst subject to a range of both theoretical and methodological criticisms, ultimately the deficiencies of Bourdieu's program are outweighed by the benefits of reflexive sociology in developing the autonomy of the field of film studies, allowing for future film study fully cognizant of the mechanisms of symbolic violence and thus academic knowledge production more attentive to the destructive logic of the open market.